With the ever-increasing use of smokeless tobacco and the advantages of having individual portions prepackaged in a suitable permeable pouch or packet, the individual packaging of these rather small pouches has become extremely difficult on a large scale, rapid production basis. The basic problem has been the inability to form with assured reliability individual packages in a continuous manner at rates of production which would be acceptable based on the demanded quality control and product specifications. As a consequence, prior art machines which have formed individual packets on a step and index basis have had production rates which have been unsatisfactory. Individual packages have varied in quality and content. Unpredictable products and their slow production have been very unacceptable. In part this has been due to the agglomerative nature of snuff tobacco, all resulting in the production of unacceptable products with a number of quality control problems found to be unmanageable in prior art machines, even at their low rates of production.